re: #60 erik_t

The GOP’s current platform can absolutely be made to be harmful to the GOP, in the same way that the old Gilded Age fell apart. But ‘backfire’ implies that it’s a self-fulfilling intrinsic result, which is assuredly untrue. It took active effort and real sacrifice to fight these forces a hundred years ago, and it will take active effort again.

‘Backfire’ suggests we can sit back and watch the whole rotten pile crumble from within. Maybe we could, with time, if we wanted to watch the country crumble with it… I don’t really like that route.

Comparisons made by liberals to the Gilded Age used to seem a little silly, if not outright hyperbolic. Even I thought so, and I’m a liberal. Things have changed dramatically—Now there’s no denying that the gop goal is a new Gilded Age, since everything starting with the Progressive Era (right after the Gilded Age) is now posited by the gop as leading to our downfall.

Remember Bush’s “compassionate conservativsm.” The GOP is now embarrassed by that compassionate moniker and runs away from it, presumably because it sounds gay and socialistic, not in-your-face reactionary which is their current style.